NASA vs. NOAA on Comet's Fate

When Comet Lovejoy made its way perilously close to the Sun this week, NASA officials boldly went where few would dare to go, predicting that the comet's encounter with the solar surface would result in its demise.

"Welcome to the beginning of the end of comet Lovejoy's billions of years long journey through space," NASA said in a video issued in advance of the comet's rendezvous with the Sun.

But Jason Samenow of The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang reports that Lovejoy in fact did not meet a fiery end. While the 660-foot mass of rock apparently lost its tail, it didn't disappear.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said they knew all along Lovejoy would make it. "SWPC researchers were watching this event and predicited that this comet would survive its close encounter with the Sun," they claimed on their Facebook page.

Nothing like a scientist-vs.-scientist smackdown, federal-style.

Here's the NASA video: